Doubting Con Man’s Paternity Claims, Lawyer Quits

A con artist who claims he is the son of a famed leader of the Irish Republican Army lost his lawyer on Tuesday. The lawyer, a longtime I.R.A. supporter who said he took the case out of sympathy, said he could not take the chance he was being tricked.

“I go to Ireland all the time,” the lawyer, Edward Hayes, said as he left court, having asked a judge in State Supreme Court in Manhattan to be relieved. “That’s where my ancestors are. I don’t want to be embarrassed.”

The con artist, Jeremy Wilson, 42, who is awaiting trial on forgery charges, has invented a dozen aliases over a 25-year career as a professional impostor and identity thief, prosecutors say.

In a recent interview, he claimed he was the biological son of Brian Keenan, the I.R.A. member who directed a bombing campaign in Britain in the 1970s and later played a role in the peace process. Mr. Wilson also hinted that he himself was active in the I.R.A. in the late 1990s.

Mr. Hayes, a former Bronx prosecutor who is among the most prominent Irish-American lawyers in the city, agreed to represent Mr. Wilson when the accused man reached out to him after his arrest on Jan. 4.

He provided Mr. Hayes with the results of a DNA test and other documents that he said proved his relationship with Mr. Keenan.

In a recent interview, Mr. Wilson said his mother, Patricia Clark, traveled to Northern Ireland in 1972 and had a brief affair with Mr. Keenan, who was on the run from the British government at the time. He said he learned the truth from his mother as a teenager and developed an epistolary relationship with Mr. Keenan, who was imprisoned. Mr. Keenan died in 2008.

Mr. Wilson first made the claim in a lawsuit in 2011, while serving a six-year federal sentence for identity theft and forging a judge’s signature. The lawsuit asked a federal judge to declare he was not an American citizen and deport him to Britain.

Stephen Ure, an immigration lawyer in San Diego, said Mr. Wilson had hired him in 2012 to help with his effort to be sent to Britain.

In 2012, Mr. Ure said, he received DNA samples via courier that, according to accompanying documents, had been taken six years earlier from Mr. Keenan, Mr. Wilson and his mother. Mr. Ure had the samples tested at a reputable California laboratory, and the results proved conclusively that Mr. Keenan was Mr. Wilson’s father, the lawyer said. Mr. Wilson, or someone on his behalf, also paid Mr. Ure $25,000, depositing the money into his bank account.

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Jeremy Wilson is awaiting trial on forgery charges.CreditChang W. Lee/The New York Times

Mr. Ure provided Mr. Hayes with copies of the same documents, which were obtained by The New York Times. The genetic expert who did the DNA test confirmed it had been done and the results were accurate.

There is doubt, however, about the origin of the samples. The documents claimed that a British company, DNA Worldwide Group Ltd., had collected the samples in 2006 and then handed them over to officials at the Royal Bank of Scotland for safekeeping.

An official at DNA Worldwide, however, said the company had no record of having taken the samples and noted the documents lacked the case numbers the company employs to track cases. The Royal Bank of Scotland declined to comment.

In addition, the documents claimed Mr. Keenan had allowed a nurse to take a swab of DNA from him at HMP Kennet, a prison near Liverpool, in April 2006. The prison was not opened until June 2007, Thomas Hewett, a spokesman for the British Ministry of Justice, said.

The documents also claimed Mr. Wilson’s mother had given her sample at Indiana University Hospital on Oct. 14, 2006, a year before she died. But Mr. Wilson’s sister in Indiana, Mary Katharine Rybak, said that was impossible. That day was her 18th birthday, Ms. Rybak said, and their mother had spent the entire day with her.

Mr. Hayes said he was still not sure Mr. Wilson was not telling the truth. He said he had initially been willing to represent him because the DNA test suggested there was a strong chance he might be Mr. Keenan’s son. He also could not imagine how Mr. Wilson had faked the documents while in prison.

In the end, however, the doubts were too great, Mr. Hayes said. “I didn’t want to take a chance,” he said.

After Mr. Hayes asked to be relieved, Justice Laura A. Ward asked Mr. Wilson if he had the money to pay for a new lawyer. “Not at the moment,” he said.

Later in the day, Mr. Wilson, looking dour in a tan prison suit, was brought back into court. Justice Ward appointed Robert Briere, a public defender, to represent him.

As he took over the case, Mr. Briere said Mr. Wilson wanted his name changed to Mr. Keenan on the indictment. He said a court in California had changed Mr. Wilson’s surname to Keenan in 2013 while he was in federal prison.